The Life and Times of Richard III Read online

  Edward’s outriders galloped into Barnet village that same afternoon, putting Warwick’s scouts to flight. Half a mile beyond, they collided with the Earl’s front line drawn up across a low ridge well shielded by hedgerows. Richard, who led the Yorkist van, conferred with his brother and despite the failing light they decided to press on beyond the village and take up their positions right under Warwick’s nose. All night long Warwick’s cannon pounded into the darkness. ‘But’, recorded an eye witness, ‘thanked be God! it so fortuned that they alway overshot the King’s host, and hurted them nothing.’

  At daybreak on Easter Sunday both armies were obscured from each other’s sight by a thick fog. Unbeknown to Edward the two lines of battle overlapped; his left, under Lord Hastings, was outflanked by Warwick’s right under the Earl of Oxford, while the Yorkist right, commanded by Richard, outflanked the Duke of Exeter’s men on the Lancastrian left. As soon as the fighting began, Hastings was in trouble. Under heavy pressure both from the front and on the flank his troops wavered, fell back and finally broke. With Oxford’s men at their heels, they abandoned the field and streamed back down the road towards London. By mid-morning the streets of the capital were alive with rumours that ‘the King was distressed and his field lost’. At the same time Richard was taking advantage of his corresponding overlap on the right, so weakening Exeter’s flank that Warwick had to commit the Lancastrian reserves.

  Edward, commanding the Yorkist centre, was now in great danger from Oxford’s victorious troops. Returning from the rout of Hastings’s men, Oxford intended to attack the King from the rear. But by now the line of battle had swung around from an east-west to a north-south axis, and the Earl of Oxford’s men collided not with Edward’s troops, but with Montagu’s. Met by a volley of arrows from Montagu’s archers, Oxford’s men panicked and fell back. The Earl of Oxford himself fled from the field, convinced that Montagu had turned his coat again.

  The ensuing confusion decided the day. By 7 am the Lancastrian front was broken, and Montagu was dead. Warwick was overtaken in flight by the King’s men and put to death on the spot. As proof of his decisive victory, Edward had the two Neville corpses exposed to public view at St Paul’s.

  On that same Easter Sunday, Queen Margaret landed at Weymouth with her son, Prince Edward. Bottled up by head winds at Honfleur for three weeks, she came too late to save the House of Neville. But the Duke of Somerset was quick to point out that Edward’s army too had been badly mauled; in Wales and Lancashire, the traditional strongholds of her House, she could still bring enough men to her banners to reverse the verdict of Barnet. Speed was all important, for if Edward could hold or destroy the bridges on the River Severn before she could cross, Margaret would be cut off. On 3 May she reached the first crossing-point at Gloucester after an all-night march: but the gates were closed and Edward was by now too close behind to let her risk an assault on the town. Without pause she drove on to the next passage at Tewkesbury. Here, at four in the afternoon, she was compelled to rest. Her foot soldiers were exhausted and even the horses were flagging. Camping in a field outside the town that night, Margaret realised that she must now turn and fight.

  On Saturday, 4 May 1471, it was Richard, Duke of Gloucester who led the Yorkist van on the road from Cheltenham to Tewkesbury. This time he faced the Lancastrian left, commanded by Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, the third to bear that title in a cause which had already carried off his father and his elder brother. The ground between the two armies was a patchwork of ‘foul lanes and deep dykes, and many hedges’, well reconnoitred by Somerset’s scouts but unfamiliar to Richard. Perceiving his advantage, Somerset marched his men swiftly round to Richard’s flank and launched his attack.

  It was a well-judged move, but Somerset knew nothing of the company of spearmen Edward had stationed in a wood a few hundred yards to the left of Richard’s position. Those ‘200 spears’ now found themselves ideally placed at Somerset’s rear. Seizing their opportunity they ‘came and brake on, all at once upon the Duke of Somerset and his vanguard... whereof they were greatly dismayed and abashed, and so took them to flight into the park, and into the meadow that was near, and into lanes and dykes, where they best hoped to escape the danger’. Richard’s men surged forward and the pursuit became a rout. Somerset’s retreat was cut off by the River Avon and the field across which he fled earned the name of Bloody Meadow.

  Richard’s success proved decisive. While Edward pressed the attack on the Lancastrian centre, Richard’s men rounded on their unprotected flank. The entire Lancastrian line crumbled and fled. Prince Edward was overtaken by a detachment of Clarence’s men and butchered. The rebel leaders who had taken sanctuary in Tewkesbury Abbey were dragged out, condemned and beheaded in the market place. A few days later Queen Margaret was taken prisoner and the last Lancastrian force in England – the Kentishmen raised by the Bastard of Fauconberg – retired from an abortive siege of London.

  One last grisly act sealed the triumph of the House of York. In the words of the chronicler John Warkworth:

  And the same night that King Edward came to London, King Henry, being inward in prison in the Tower of London, was put to death, the 21st day of May, on a Tuesday night, between eleven and twelve of the clock, being then at the Tower the duke of Gloucester, brother to King Edward, and many other; and on the morrow he was chested and brought to Paul’s, and his face was open that every man might see him; and in his lying he bled on the pavement there; and afterward at the Black Friars was brought, and there he bled new and fresh; and from thence he was carried to Chertsey Abbey in a boat, and buried there in our Lady Chapel.

  3

  ‘Loyalty binds me’

  1471–83

  Edward’s murder of the harmless, kindly and befogged King Henry shocked many of his contemporaries. In the words of the author of the Great Chronicle of London, Henry cared ‘little or nothing of the pomp or vanities of this world, wherefore after my mind he might say, as Christ said to Pilate, “my kingdom is not of this world” for God had endowed him with such grace that he chose the life contemplative, the which he forsook not from his tender age unto the last day of his life’. Of his many acts of kindness, none is more poignant than the concern he showed for Edward’s wife during her confinement in Westminster Abbey, when he sent her food and wine.

  Yet Henry was the victim not of Edward’s cruelty, but of his own saintly indifference to worldly affairs. He lost his throne because England needed a king, not a monk – a strong king who could restore order, dispense justice and promote trade. He lost his life because the magic of his name could still inspire the respect and loyalty that men like Warwick needed to mask their cynical ambitions. With Henry as a focus for the plots, uprisings and invasions that blighted the early promise of Edward’s reign, the monarchy tumbled into disrespect and the Crown became no more than first prize in an aristocratic power game. As the chronicler John Warkworth shrewdly noted ‘When King Edward reigned, the people looked after all the aforesaid prosperities and peace, but it came not; but one battle after another, and much trouble and great loss of goods among the common people.’ Henry, the guiltless cause of so much trouble, had to die so that the king could be king.

  A later generation of Tudor historians, brought up on tales of Richard’s villainy, could not resist the imputation that Richard was personally responsible for the deaths of both Henry VI and his son Edward. According to Edward Hall, who wrote in Henry VIII’s reign, Prince Edward was not slain at the battle of Tewkesbury but taken prisoner and brought before the King, ‘being a goodly feminine and well featured young gentleman’. Whereupon the King:

  ...demanded of him, how he durst so presumptuously enter into his Realm with banner displayed. The prince, being bold of stomach and of a good courage, answered saying: to recover my father’s kingdom and inheritage.... At which words King Edward said nothing, but with his hand thrust him from him (or, as some say, stroke him with his gauntlet), whom incontinent, they that stood about which were
George, Duke of Clarence, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, Thomas, Marquess Dorset and William, Lord Hastings, suddenly murdered and piteously manquelled.

  Of Henry VI’s death the same author writes: ‘Poor King Henry the Sixth, a little before deprived of his realm and imperial crown was now in the Tower of London spoiled of his life... by Richard Duke of Gloucester (as the constant fame ran) which to the intent that King Edward his brother should be clear of all secret suspicion of sudden invasion, murdered the said king with a dagger.’ In fact, there is no foundation for either of these stories. All the contemporary accounts of Tewkesbury, Lancastrian and Yorkist, simply state that Prince Edward was slain on the battlefield. Likewise, all that is known of Henry’s murder is the bald fact of his death, along with Warkworth’s statement that Richard accompanied his brothers ‘and many others’ to the Tower on the fatal night.

  The Duke of Gloucester was, however, to play a vital part in restoring the majesty of the Crown. In July 1471 – only a few weeks after the exhausting ordeal of the Tewkesbury campaign – he was on his way north to deal with a new rash of border incidents on the Scottish Marches. This was no temporary commission. Edward had decided to invest the eighteen-year-old veteran of his two great victories with the spoils – and the responsibilities – of the conquered Earl of Warwick.

  In the northern counties and the Scottish Marches a strong tradition of lawlessness and independence defied the efforts of the distant Council at Westminster to impose order and justice. The rugged and backward North had long enjoyed a political complexion different from that of the South. In order to protect the border against Scottish incursions, successive English kings had invested great families, such as the Nevilles and the Percies, with huge estates and semi-regal powers to raise private armies as Wardens of the Marches. For fifteen years, the open warfare between the Nevilles and Percies had promoted local feuds and invited the depredations of the Scots.

  With the extinction of the House of Lancaster and the disgrace of the Nevilles, only one great magnate was left in the North. Edward had restored Henry Percy, barely in his twenties, to the earldom of Northumberland in 1470. The last four generations of Percies had died in civil wars, the last two in the Lancastrian cause. Clearly the time had come to appoint a strong man who could both fill the vacuum left by the Nevilles, and balance the dubious loyalty of the young Earl of Northumberland. Richard’s headquarters were to be at the familiar castle of Middleham, which was granted to him along with the former Neville lordships of Sheriff Hutton and Penrith, and the whole of Warwick’s holdings in Yorkshire and Cumberland. Two important offices further buttressed his power: the stewardship of the duchy of Lancaster beyond the Trent, and the wardenship of the West Marches towards Scotland, with final authority over Henry Percy, who was Warden of the Middle and Eastern Marches. His former Welsh offices were, in the meantime, transferred to the young William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke (later Earl of Huntingdon).

  The summer months passed as Richard reviewed his new estates and conducted a short foray against the Scottish border raiders, but in the autumn he hurried back to London on family business. Prior to his departure Richard had sought and obtained the King’s permission to marry Anne Neville. Only sixteen years old, the Kingmaker’s daughter was already the fatherless widow of a Prince, although it is unlikely that the marriage was ever consummated. From Richard’s point of view the young cousin who had watched him learn to hunt and joust at Middleham was an ideal bride. The marriage would discharge a debt of honour to the family which had taken him into their household. On a material level, it would confirm him in his title to Warwick’s northern possessions, and bring him a share of the even more extensive Beauchamp estates which Warwick had held in his wife’s right.

  It was the question of Anne’s inheritance which now sparked off an ugly quarrel with Clarence. As the husband of Warwick’s elder daughter, Isabel, Clarence had hoped to appropriate the whole of the Beauchamp lands which belonged properly to his mother-in-law, Anne Beauchamp. Even this princely inheritance – more than one hundred and fifty manors scattered throughout the country from Devon to Durham – was a meagre consolation for the crown Clarence dreamed of wearing, and he did not intend to share it with his younger brother.

  When Richard arrived at Clarence’s lodgings to claim his prospective bride, he was told to keep his hands off her. Richard appealed to the King, who ordered Clarence not to interfere with the proposed marriage. Clarence retaliated by persuading Anne to dress up as a kitchen maid, and concealed her in the household of a friend. Like most of Clarence’s schemes, the ruse was soon uncovered, and Richard had her removed to the sanctuary of St Martin’s. At this point the King intervened to mediate between the brothers before the affair got out of hand. Both put their case at a Council meeting, where even the lawyers were surprised by the subtlety of their arguments. In point of fact, Clarence had no case at all: he was not Anne’s guardian in any legal sense, and the girl’s mother was still alive, immured in the sanctuary of Beaulieu Abbey since the battle of Tewkesbury. Nevertheless, Edward found it politic to soothe Clarence’s ruffled feathers and a compromise was reached. Richard’s marriage was to go ahead, but he was to receive only a part of Warwick’s personal holdings, while the rest, including the Countess’s inheritance and the earldoms of Warwick and Salisbury, was reserved for Clarence. In addition, Richard was induced to give up to Clarence his office of Great Chamberlain.

  Although Anne and Richard were cousins, the marriage was quickly celebrated without the formality of a papal dispensation, and the couple retired to Yorkshire. Early in 1473 the Duchess of Gloucester gave birth to a son who was christened Edward. Four months later Richard persuaded the King – despite vehement protests from Clarence – to allow his mother-in-law to leave Sanctuary unharmed and to join the household at Middleham.

  The Clarence-Gloucester quarrel exhibits all the worst features of a private baronial feud blown up into a threat to public order by the irresponsible behaviour of those involved. Richard’s considerate treatment of the Countess of Warwick and his subsequent attempts to obtain a pardon for George Neville, the Archbishop of York, show that his motives, at least, were tempered by some concern for the family under whose roof he had grown up at Middleham. But it is hard to find any redeeming features in Clarence’s behaviour. He was bent on making trouble, even though he had acquired the lion’s share of the Warwick inheritance. In 1472 and 1473 rumours again linked his name with Louis XI, who sponsored an unsuccessful invasion led by that most tenacious of all Lancastrian supporters, the Earl of Oxford. When the Earl landed at St Michael’s Mount in late September 1473, Clarence was breathing dark hints of treason and vengeance. In London Sir John Paston reported that the King’s entourage sent for their harness to prepare for the worst: ‘the Duke of Clarence maketh himself big in that he can, showing as he would but deal with the Duke of Gloucester. But the King intendeth to be as big as they both and to be a stifler between them. And some think that under this there be some other thing intended, and some treason conspired.’

  The crisis was happily averted – or at least postponed – by the failure of Oxford’s attempted invasion. He never got further than St Michael’s Mount, where he was bottled up until Edward induced him to surrender in February 1474. Clarence was not called to account for his treasonable posturings: the King patiently agreed to look into his grievances, and a fresh division of the Warwick estates was submitted to Parliament for approval.

  The long-term consequences of this episode were by no means exhausted, but towards the end of 1474 a more important enterprise overshadowed the affairs of the kingdom. Edward IV had decided to settle accounts with Louis XI, and was preparing to lead an invasion of France in the following spring. Since 1461 Louis had sanctioned one attempt after another against the Yorkist throne: first, Margaret of Anjou’s, then Warwick’s and now Oxford’s. Edward did not seriously contemplate the reconquest of a kingdom at least four times as populous as his own: but in concert with Louis’
s arch enemy, Charles, Duke of Burgundy, he could inflict a punishing blow which would restore England’s initiative in foreign policy and avenge the endless humiliations of Henry VI’s reign.

  Edward’s enterprise was first mooted in 1472, and Parliament had already voted a special tax to pay the wages of thirteen thousand archers. Efforts to collect this tax foundered on the stubborn resistance of ‘the generality of his said commons’, and the King was compelled to resort to the equally unpopular but more effective practice of raising benevolences. These loans-on-demand, voluntary in theory but difficult to refuse in practice, were begged or bullied from all men of substance – £30 from the Mayor of London, £10 – £20 from the Aldermen and £4 11s 3d, ‘the wages of half a soldier for a year’, from the head commoners. One merry widow from Suffolk was rewarded for her £10 by a royal kiss, and promptly doubled her contribution.

  The army was raised by means of indenture – a contract whereby the principals bound themselves to supply an agreed number of men at an agreed fee. Richard, as the second man in the kingdom, indented for one hundred and twenty mounted lances and one thousand archers – about one-tenth of the host that embarked for Calais in June 1475. Louis’s adviser, Philip de Commynes, described it as ‘the most numerous, the best disciplined, the best mounted and the best armed that ever any king of that nation invaded France withal’. The French Court was close to panic: an Italian envoy reported that ‘his Majesty is more discomposed than words can describe and has almost lost his wits. In his desperation and bitterness he uttered the following precise words, among others, Ah Holy Mary, even now when I have given thee 1,400 crowns, thou dost not help me one whit.’